Googoosh

Faegheh Atashin (born 5 May 1950), known professionally as Googoosh, is an Iranian singer and former actress.

One of the most popular and prolific entertainers in Iran, her career has spanned over six decades.

Googoosh has enjoyed significant popularity since the beginning of her career, ultimately becoming a cultural icon inside Iran and abroad.

She is mainly known for her contributions to Iranian pop music, but she also starred in a variety of Persian movies from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Googoosh was born as Faegheh Atashin on 5 May 1950, in Tehran, to Azerbaijani parents who emigrated from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union.

She was quickly called "Googoosh", an Armenian name normally exclusively used for boys but which became her stage name.

In an interview she noted that she was called Googoosh from a very early age; in her birth certificate however her birth name Faegheh is recorded.

Her music ranged from upbeat 1960s and 1970s pop, given a traditional-tinged edge, to declamatory, emotional ballads dealing with love and loss, comparable to the chanson style of music by artists like Édith Piaf.

Her music was popular among non-Persian-speaking audiences as well.

The Spanish singer Julio Iglesias covered the song Bavar Kon.

She starred in over 25 movies, one of which was to be the most commercially successful Iranian motion picture of all time.

Googoosh performed many times for the royal family and was a favorite of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's wife and children.

She achieved the pinnacle of her fame and success towards the end of the 1970s.

In the 1970s, Googoosh was widely emulated by Iranian women, as they copied her clothing (miniskirts) and her short haircut (known as the "Googooshi").

During the 1970s, Googoosh began a meteoric rise to fame and success as she drove the edge of Iranian pop music further and further.

Known for her flamboyant outfits and fashion sense, Googoosh wowed her pop-culture-hungry fans in Iran and abroad with her trademark hairdos and hip-elegant style, inspiring many Iranian women to copy her hairdos.

Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, she remained in Tehran until 2000 and did not perform again during that period due to the ban on female singers.

Younger generations of Iranians have rediscovered her music via bootleg recordings.

At the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Googoosh was in Los Angeles.

However, feeling homesick, she decided to return to Iran.

In response to why she remained in Iran after the revolution, she said that it was "out of love of her for her homeland".

Despite being a symbol of many things that the revolution tried to overturn, especially related to perceptions of excessive Westernization, Googoosh remained in Iran for years afterward.

After the revolution, Googoosh, like other artists, was forbidden from performing and her material was banned.

She would not perform again until Mohammad Khatami's presidency, during which she was allowed to tour outside of the country.

Made by Iranian-American filmmaker Farhad Zamani, the documentary began production in 1998 and was made at a time when Googoosh was still forbidden to give interviews.

After leaving Iran in 2000, she performed a total of 27 concerts in European and North American countries in that year.

Since her return to the stage in the summer of 2000, she has performed in concerts and venues all around the world, including the Madison Square Garden in New York, the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, the Ericsson Globe in Stockholm, Honda Center in Anaheim, Royal Albert Hall in London and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles She has recorded songs in many languages including Persian, Azerbaijani, Turkish, English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Armenian and French.

She has a significant following outside of Iran and has even received the attention of European and African media and press.

Googoosh left Iran and went to Canada in 2000, after being in Iran for 21 years following the Iranian Revolution.

BMusic's Taghinia, says "Googoosh is the siren of that era [Pre-revolution] and important in that she's really a direct link to Iran's past."

Chicago Tribune considers the return of Googoosh to be "more than just a pop milestone" but instead "a cultural marker, a measure of the way change occurs in a society that for more than two decades has tried to resist the tide of globalization by living in self-imposed isolation."

She released her first album after her comeback called Zartosht (Zoroaster) in 2000 with lyrics by Masoud Kimiaei (under the pseudonym Nosrat Farzaneh) and composed and arranged by Babak Amini and Babak Bayat.

In 2000, Googoosh sang in public, away from her homeland, for the first time after 21 years of silence to the acclaim of many long-time fans.

The Googoosh Comeback Tour was a series of concerts starting in July 2000.

She began with a sold-out concert at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto on 29 July 2000 (with an audience of more than 12,000), and eventually brought the tour to a conclusion in Dubai on 21 and 24 March 2001 on the occasion of the Iranian New Year, Nowruz.

Her concert in Dubai was considered a homecoming for her, and out of the more than 20,000 members of the audience, seventy percent of them were Iranians who had crossed the Persian Gulf to hear her.

The two Dubai concerts held special importance: it was the tour finale, and Googoosh was rumored to be planning to return to Iran.

In 2000, a feature-length documentary called Googoosh: Iran's Daughter was released which chronicled the singer's life and her icon-status while detailing the socio-political turmoil that led to the 1979 Revolution in Iran.

Recent projects include a new collaboration with Iranian singer-songwriter Hassan Shamaizadeh from her 2012 album Ejaz, as well as serving as head judge and head of academy for the popular reality show Googoosh Music Academy broadcast on London-based satellite channel Manoto 1.

She performed at the party given for the 17th birthday of Reza Pahlavi, Crown Prince of Iran.